BYRIC KASINI KADOUR

and lesbian community unleashes itself

onto the city in a week’s worth of high-
powered events called Divers/Cite’. The
festival begins the evening of Monday,
July 25th and runs through Sunday, July
3 1 st.

In the last week of July, Montreal’s gay

To call Divers/Cité Montreal’s
gay pride celebration is an understatement.
The week—long event, jammed with con-
certs, lectures, performances, and parties,
fits snuggly into Quebec’s festival tradi-
tion. From early May through the Fall,
Montreal plays hosts to festival after festi-
val after festival, sometimes dueling and
overlapping, and generally focused on a
particular ethnic or cultural attribute. Also
in Julyis an international fireworks com-
petition, Le Mondial SAQ; the
International Jazz Festival; a classical
music festival; a comedy festival; an
African music festival; a boat race; and
Les Francofolies which celebrates aspects
of French culture supposedly left out of
the dozens of other festivals.

These are no small affairs. Streets
are closed. Large teams of security are
hired. Lavish press conferences are held.
Official parties celebrating the successful
launch, completion, and sometimes simply
the half-way point of the festival are had.
At any one time, whole neighborhoods in
the city are under the partial control of an

Montreal
  Shows Its
Divers/Cité!

pera meets electronic in a cabaret with the 2005 pop-art adap-
tation of PurceII’s Dido & Aeneas

Songspiel: O

 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 

 

gay I mean big—hat—wea1‘ing—drag-queens,
erotic-Gerrnan—cabaret, queer-rock—electro-
punk, lesbo-monde gay. And I do not
mean, tucked—away—in-the-corner, or let’s-
pretend—they’re—not—that-queer gay. '
Montreal embraces Divers/Cite’ the way it
embraces the Grand Prix or the Festival
Baroque. As they should.

The budget for Divers/Cité is
$1.5 million (CAN). Divers/Cité is big
business with big business support.
Sponsors of this year’s festival include the
likes of Molson, Air Canada, music vendor
Archambault, condom maker Trojan, and
Naya bottled water. Mainstream media
partners include CBC television and the
Canadian version of MTV, MusiMax,
among others. A local television station
will carry the parade live. Festival plan-
ners work closely with the Economic
Development Canada and the Quebec
Ministry of Tourism as well as the City of
Montreal. '

Divers/Cité has more in common
with Berlin’s Love Parade and Sydney’s
Mardi Gras than it does with gay pride cel-
ebrations in the United States. It is rela-
tively free from the ongoing debates about
the meaning of gay pride, whether or not
pride should be a protest or a celebration,
and what parts of the queer community are
appropriate to show mainstream society.
Liberated, ~

Divers/Cité is a celebration of
things queer, a sharing of gay ideas and
aesthetics, and quite simply, a damn good
time.V

overworked man or woman clutching a
clipboard, screaming into a walkie—ta1kie.
The only thing special about
Divers/Cité is that it is a gay festival. And
by gay, I mean super-gay, and by super-

Parade

Monday, July 25th

Divers/Cité launches with a night
parade on Monday evening. The
parade begins at 8PM and travels on
Boulevard René-Lévesque from
Avenue de Lorimier to Rue Berri.
Expect a spectacle as this year’s
parade lights up the night. FREE

Songspiel: Electronic

cabaret

Thesday, July 26th.

Opera meets electronic music. For
those who love opera, the program
includes a must-see pop-art adapta-
tion of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. For
those who think opera is gay,
Songspiel is a sexy, multi-media
whirl of video zmd dance with music
that will move you and a twisted
story about a man on the edge. 8PM
at Cabaret du Casino de Montreal.

$35 CAN

Must-Ds for ierslcité 2005

La Mala Educacién
Wednesday, July 27th

French isn’t the only language spo-
ken in Montreal. Diver/Cité presents
Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education
outside at Emilie-Gamelin Park. It

2 goes something like this: you, sit-

ting on the grass under a star-lit
summer night watching Gael Garcia
Bemal emerge from the swimming
pool in very tight white underwear.
FREE

Lady Bunny @ Jello
Bar

Thursday, July 28th

Who wouldn’t want to see some-
thing called Lady Bunny at a place
called Jello Bar? But seriously, the
Grande Dame of Drag, Miss

WigStock herself will be hauling her
huge headwear to Montreal for a
performance at this retro-chic venue.
If the big hats and legendary status
of Lady Bunny aren’t alluring
enough, perhaps one of Jello Bar’s
fifty signature martinis will do the
trick. Midnight, 151 Ontario East.
$12 advance, $15 at door.

1, Boulevard des

V Réves

Friday, July 29th

“Velvety jazz, smooth R&B, and
crisp pop music” is how the folks at
Divers/Cité are describing the
sounds of this outdoor concert. lt’s
free, so check it out. But the real
Boulevard des Réves, which means
‘street of dreams,’ is Sainte-
Catherine from Beaudry to Papineau

  
 

Ric Kasini Kadour is our Montreal cultural
maven, and he maintains a residence in
Shoreham.

where a few thousand people will
pour into the gay Village for the
start of Pride weekend. Expect the
bars to be packed and the terraces to
be overflowing with hot homo
action.

Lesbomonde

Saturday, July 30th

Okay, I freely admit that Montreal is
not the best city in the world for les-
bians, but every now and then an
event pops up that’ll make women
roar. Lesbomonde is one of them.
NYC DJ 'I\2visted Dee spins and new
wave pioneer Carol Pope sings at an
event guaranteed to show that
women can party just as hard. Oh, if
you’ve never been in a crowd of
several hundred

(sexy!) lesbians, here’s your chance.

9:30-3AM, Just for Laughs _
Museum, $22 before July 18th, $27
after.

Sexgarage

Saturday, July 30th and Sunday,
July 31st

“Sexgarage is a two-day onslaught
of queer rock and electro-punk per-
formances featuring some of the
most sonically diverse and atypical
acts in alternative music.” This two-
day festival will be on the Trojan
stage on the corner of de
Maisonneuve and Saint Denis. On
Saturday, don’t miss Quebec City’s
Echo Kitty, who makes electro-pop
out of rockabilly, new wave, and
glam. On Sunday, you have to see
Lesbians on Ecstasy: politically
infused dance music. Think of it as
folk music on drugs. V

For more information, see
www.diverscite .org.

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